Head of Ecommerce

**West Yorkshire (Wakefield area) | Hybrid, 2 to 3 days on site | £65,000 to £70,000 + benefits**

Plenty of eCommerce businesses have one person who knows the platform inside out. Fewer have the sense to hire their equal, someone who looks at the same system from a completely different angle. That's what this role is.

I'm working exclusively with a well established UK business supplies group that sells, distributes and delivers to workplaces across the UK and Ireland. Several trading brands run on their bespoke, Java based eCommerce platform. It trades every day and carries real commercial weight.

Their Head of eCommerce Development has been with the business for years and knows the platform and how it ties into the wider business better than anyone. The problem is that everything has to go through one person. Projects queue up, and the engineering foundations don't get the attention they need.

So they're creating a second head of function, a peer to the Head of eCommerce Development, both reporting into the Head of eCommerce. They'll keep driving the product, new sites and business change. You'll own the technical side underneath it: resilience, security, code quality, testing and how software gets delivered.

Why now

The business is bringing full ownership of its platform in house. That opens up development that simply wasn't possible before, including new ways for customers to buy, with marketplace capability on the roadmap.

The platform isn't being replaced. The job is to make what's there stronger, safer and easier to build on, using what you've seen work on other platforms and in other teams.

What you'll own

• Uptime and resilience: The site has had outages under sudden spikes in traffic, and the cause is different each time. You'll find the root cause, fix it properly and make sure it stays fixed.
• Security: Access controls, secrets management, vulnerability remediation, and deciding what the next level of security looks like.
• Engineering standards: Code review across every site, coding standards, reusable components and documentation that cuts the reliance on any one person.
• Delivery: Azure DevOps, Git, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing and controlled releases, so work moves through a proper, sustainable development process.
• Payments and integrations: Keeping current payment interfaces secure and integrating new ones, following PCI DSS requirements.
• Keeping the stack current: Java updates, dependency management and practical modernisation, without disrupting live trading.
• Challenge: Bringing fresh ideas and questioning established ways of doing things, constructively.

Building your own team

This is a growth role. You'll manage people from the start, and as the eCommerce function splits into dedicated workstreams you'll build and lead your own team, with more teams to follow as the business grows.

What they're looking for

• Around 5 to 10 years in software development, with a clear track record of stepping up. Exceptional people with less will still be considered.
• Substantial experience in transactional eCommerce, or in building and running websites for a retail business. Sites that take money, not just apps or brochure sites.
• Strong, practical Java and object oriented development skills
• Solid experience with Git and Azure DevOps (or something comparable)
• Experience managing developers and getting projects delivered on time
• Experience working on live systems with lots of dependencies, where you think through the knock on effects before you ship anything
• Exposure to more than one platform or way of working, so you bring a wider view
• Someone who can explain technical risk clearly to people who aren't engineers

Nice to have

• payment gateway integration
• Azure and Infrastructure as Code
• monitoring and alerting
• performance and security testing
• incident management and disaster recovery

The environment

It's fast paced and commercially driven, with real pressure to deliver. Decisions get made quickly and your work will show up quickly. You'll be working with people who know their own areas very well and want someone who knows a different area just as well.

Why it's worth a conversation

• A genuine head of function role, on equal footing with the existing Head of Development
• A platform coming fully in house, with new development opening up
• A clear path to building and leading your own team
• Real ownership of the engineering foundations of a business that trades every day
• £65,000 to £70,000 plus benefits

Please note

You'll be on site two to three days a week, and the office is hard to reach by public transport, so you'll need to be able to drive there. A full UK driving licence and your own transport are essential.

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